


one for the road

by beanarie



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Canon Fill-in, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Past Drug Use, Relapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3990691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two nights ago, Sherlock and Alfredo were watching Abbott and Costello on the brownstone roof. Joan was making them popcorn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one for the road

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to hophophop/amindamazed for Ms. Hudson's name.

Alfredo is assessed by the EMTs and bundled off to the hospital. There is no response from Sherlock.

Joan and Marcus return to the precinct and complete their paperwork. No matter how many times she checks her phone or the door, they don't reveal any sign of him.

Oscar Rankin is found not far from the four day old corpse of a young woman. He has a severe concussion and other injuries consistent with a savage beating. The unis who discovered them had been acting on an anonymous tip. Sherlock? Maybe? All she knows is that he isn't at the scene.

She calculates the hours between briefing Gregson and Marcus and finding Alfredo. The number repeats endlessly, never letting her forget the amount of time Sherlock was exposed to that walking trigger. She sends seventy seven texts.

At the first scratch of his key unlocking the front door, she flies down the stairs. On the third step from the bottom, she stumbles, almost falls. Her breath catches. There's a common dig around the precinct, really from anyone who's seen them together and knows that they're partners. People say he's twice her size. They wouldn't today. 

_Oh god_ , she thinks, a piece of cold lead dropping into her stomach every second that ticks past as he refuses to look her in the eye and ignores her repeated pleas of "Tell me what happened." _Oh god oh god oh god._

She'd left Alfredo's side within moments of finding him, so concerned about getting word to Sherlock that his friend was safe, but she still hadn't been quick enough.

She pushes herself forward into his space. She asks specific, clinically-based questions, what he took, how much, how long ago, and strangely, he answers those, with an economy of speech that feels wrong coming from him, but almost no resistance. She comes to realize he'd been... smart about this, taking less than he'd injected at the height of his addiction because even in the state he'd been in, he'd known his system couldn't handle the amount that used to get him high. The fact that he'd actively avoided an overdose, she squirrels away, keeping it safe until she decides she needs to take it out and examine it, or confront him with it.

He's coming down already, He doesn't say, but she assumes he slept for a while, after. He agrees, still oddly pliant, when she tells him he needs a hospital, and he waits, this unsteady, shrunken husk, as she goes next door to ask Mr. Chatterjee for the use of his car. She wrote a glowing recommendation letter to help their son get into Princeton. This should not be a problem.

In his bed in the detox unit, he curls into a ball with his back to her. "Do you want me to stay, Sherlock? It's not any trouble, I want you to know that, but I need you to say either way."

She waits for a very long time before, finally.

"Better if you left." He doesn't turn around. 

The last time he sent her away, it was because he'd been expecting a booty call for the weekend. He'd arranged a ritzy hotel and paid all the expenses. His expression had gotten pinched, almost peevish, when she'd referred to the bear skin rug as his sex blanket. ( _I have asked you not to call it that!_ )

She calls Marcus, then Gregson, then Estella Llamosa, stuck in a similar vigil at a different hospital. Estella sounds wonderful, weary but full of hope and gratitude that her son is safe. "He's been asking about Sherlock," she says. "Do you know when he'll be able to stop by?"

Joan mentally treads water, thrown. "I- I-"

"He's okay, isn't he?"

Joan swallows hard. "It may be a while," she says, which works for both questions. 

Two nights ago, Sherlock and Alfredo were watching Abbott and Costello on the brownstone roof. Joan was making them popcorn.

After returning the car to the Chatterjees, she goes to a bar. Two drinks is her allowance for difficult cases. An internal litany tells her this is different from the mindset that got Sherlock where he is. It is, really it is. She doesn't want to escape reality, only blur it for a bit. Raindrops falling on a window, obscuring the view, don't make anyone forget that the window and the outside still exist.

"Hey." Marcus is standing at the stool next to her. "Mind if I sit?"

"How did-"

He shrugs. "I'm a detective, remember?"

( _You're a detective now; you tell me!_ )

Her gorge rises, making the whiskey in front of her look a lot less appealing.

"Joan." He slides into the seat. "You know you're not responsible for what happened."

"I didn't make him an addict," she allows. "Either of them." Any of them. She makes a mental note to ask Estella if Alfredo's sponsor knows about everything, then chides herself for her presumption. Alfredo has his own supports. Not everyone depends on Joan Watson, former MD, former CASAC, current NYPD consultant and private detective. Damn good thing, too.

"Joan?"

She should have fought him harder. That idea of going along with Oscar had been ludicrous, so unwise it had skirted the line of self-destructive. She should have fought him harder.

She loves him, he trusted her, and when he needed her, she wasn't there. That's something she will have to come to terms with.

Her phone buzzes. A recent client wants a meeting. "Duty calls," she tells Marcus. She shakes herself, throwing off the exhaustion, preparing to go back home and review the case file before the client comes over.

~

"Are you even listening?" Ms. Rickard asks.

The whiff of irritated entitlement in those four words brings Joan back from where she'd been drifting and then some. She snaps. "You're trying to get dirt on your husband to justify leaving him before your circle finds out that he's been diagnosed with some kind of incurable illness--my guess is Parkinson's or MS--and thinks you're a monster. Am I missing anything?"

She clutches her purse closer to her. "I- I haven't mentioned his health once, in either of our meetings."

"Yes, well." Joan doesn't explain that she was doctor and could hear volumes in what she wasn't saying. Ms. Rickard doesn't deserve that part of her. "Your refusal to say anything is how I figured out what you wanted out of this." Joan rolls her shoulders, letting go of a bit of tension. "And, to be honest, I don't need the money that badly. You can leave now."

Ms. Rickard rises from her seat a half second before Joan does, radiating waves of bitterness. "You think you're better than me? I don't see a ring on that finger. You have no idea what it's like, committing to someone and then finding out that they-"

Vibrating with anger, Joan invades her space, getting in so close Ms. Rickard recoils. "You _chose_ him," she grates out. "You knew the day you put on that ring there would be bad to take with the good. If you can't stand by the person you agreed to spend your life with just because things got hard, that says a lot more about you than it does him. Or me." She backs up a few steps and blinks away the mist in her eyes. "Get the hell out of my house."

As the basement door slams behind her former client, Joan falls onto the couch, kicks off her shoes, and lies down. There's no pillow or blanket, but she doesn't have the energy to go upstairs into the world. She closes her eyes.

In her dream, she's a fly buzzing around the apartment she'd shared with Liam. She lights on one of the daisies in a vase on the kitchen table. Apology flowers, Joan had come to call them. He'd often brought them around after messing up. She's had a visceral dislike for daisies ever since.

She jerks awake, her heart pounding and her eyes wet. Her watch doesn't tell her whether it's AM or PM, so she doesn't know if she slept for two hours or half a day. She should really go upstairs.

From another part of the office, her phone rings. It's the social worker from the hospital. 

"Mr. Holmes isn't displaying any severe signs of physical withdrawal, which is consistent with you both saying this was his first use in several years. We treated the dehydration and exposure. The initial lab work came back negative for any other foreign substances or red flags. Our concern is that he is extremely withdrawn. The doctor is considering transferring him to the psych unit."

Joan immediately hears the psychologist from Hemdale ranting about Sherlock's behavior during their sessions. ( _He gave no names, no dates..._ ) "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Well, he hasn't expressed any suicidal or homicidal ideation and he hasn't displayed evidence of psychosis or paranoia. So we have no grounds for an involuntary admission. If he doesn't agree, we'll discharge him later today. He's refused to be referred to treatment, inpatient or outpatient, but I'll include some contact information in his discharge summary, just in case."

Joan is almost certain they won't need it, but she's touched the woman is making an effort.

~

Joan taps the sides of the steering wheel and glances over at the tiny sliver of profile Sherlock allows her to see. "We're going to a meeting," she says. "Is that all right?"

There's no sound, no movement but the slight expansion of his chest as he breathes.

"Or we could stop at a drive-through and take it home. They said you haven't eaten much."

Nothing.

She sighs quietly. "Bank-robbing is another viable option," she says under her breath.

"Where is the meeting?"

"Um, Queens Village?" It's out of the way, about as far East as it’s possible to go without leaving the five boroughs and incurring an extra charge on the bill for the rental car, but she thought that might help. He won't know anyone there, and no one will know him. He can ease back into the process without worrying about being judged. In theory.

He doesn't respond, but that's fine. If he didn't see the benefit in going, she'd like to believe he would have said so.

He enters the building under his own steam. She considers staying in the car, does so for several minutes, and ends up taking a seat in the hallway. The paperback she brought with her is probably worth a lot more attention than she's giving it; she can't say for sure. After five pages of words she didn't absorb, she gives up, stuffing it back in her bag. The muscles in her neck and shoulders are so tight they're practically burning.

Joan breathes out slowly. She is not his sponsor or his sober companion. She's a friend. She'll hold out her hand, but he has to choose to reach for it, and then he has to find his own footing.

~

For breakfast, he drinks half a cup of tea. She put milk and honey in it, having assumed he wouldn't touch the cereal, and she was right.

He doesn't complain about the tea. He doesn't complain about anything.

Today she picks a meeting on the Upper East Side. As they drive past the ritzy apartment buildings, her mind plays a greatest hits medley of his rants about the wealthy.

This time, when she tells herself to stay in the car, she manages to do it, though she still can't get her thoughts to quiet down enough to let her read.

~

Joan answers the door, her head already throbbing. "Hey. Marcus?"

Marcus nods at her grimly, his gaze sliding over her shoulder, searching for the reason he had to ring the bell seven times while Joan hurried out of the bathroom. He's wearing dark-wash jeans and a henley, day off clothes. "Was starting to think no one was here."

He looks around again as he takes a seat in the library. Joan shakes her head and points up, indicating the roof. 

"There's no easy way to say this," he says, and Joan has to fight not to roll her eyes. What now? "The deputy commissioner is coming to the precinct at three o'clock. He wants answers."

She shakes her head. "Sherlock's not in any condition to handle that. I'm lucky if I get ten words out of him in a day."

"We know. But you can still be there and you can let him hear your side. I'll hang out here." He stretches out a little like he's getting comfortable on the couch. "Keep your spot warm."

She blinks at how seamlessly he skips past a dozen sources of potential awkwardness. _Other people have slept, Joan._

"There's some time," he says. "You can grab a shower, get yourself together."

She almost smiles at him. Marcus understands about armor.

~

The meeting could be more accurately described as a lot of confused yelling in her direction. Joan mostly keeps her head down and speaks when spoken to.

Oscar isn't talking, apparently. He also isn't pressing charges. That's good. The brass is still considering cutting Sherlock loose, without a hearing to avoid any fuss, and maybe giving up on consultants entirely. She does her best to convince him of their necessity, citing numbers and specific examples. Gregson says very little. He can't speak out against a superior in front of civilians, but she knows he's looking out for her, if not both of them.

"You did fine," he tells her, after the deputy commissioner leaves. She should bristle at the fatherly tone. She's not a child, and definitely not his. But she can't help finding it really comforting. "Don't forget to look after yourself, okay? You want me to bring over some dinner or something tonight? Doubt either of you are eating much."

"No. Thank you. But…" She turns away, frowning. "Look in on Alfredo? Even though you've never met, he's helped with so many cases. Like-"

He holds up his hand, cutting her off. "You don't need to sell me on this, Joan. Consider it done."

"He should know we've been thinking about him," she says. And she has been doing that. Thinking about being tied up, powerless, with a gun in her face. Thinking about the dawning certainty that she absolutely _would_ die in this situation if someone, Sherlock, didn't come for her.

She can't face Alfredo any more than Sherlock can, for reasons that are all her own.

~

Joan can't say she recognizes the voice on the other side of the line, exactly, as she's never heard it before. But the identity becomes clear to her almost instantaneously.

"Is this Dr. Watson?" the caller asks in response to her hello. "Or one of his prostitutes?"

She closes her eyes. "Mr. Holmes?" 

"Dr. Watson then. Well-"

"Ms.," she interjects, expecting to be ignored, and she is.

"My son has failed to honor the one condition I placed on him. Look for my arrival tomorrow."

She grabs hold of a mug that's been standing in the same place for so long she can't remember whether it held coffee, tea, or something else like soup, and throws it against the wall. 

~

On the roof, as she tells Sherlock about his father, she's pleading with him in her head.

_Say something. Be angry. Be sad._

_Come back._

_Don't leave me alone with this._

He stares out at the lights of the cars passing over the bridge. 

He's not ready to rejoin the world. If anything, the news pushed him further away. She was expecting too much, imposing a time table based more on her own needs than his. Guilt burns a hole in her stomach.

She knows what she should do. She should tell him it's going to be okay, they're stronger than his doubts, they're stronger than his toxic father, they'll get through this together. But she tries to visualize herself saying the words, and she can't.

How many times can she keep telling him she's still here?

"Ms. Hudson is on her way," she says with a wince. Her voice is a ragged mess. "I need to step out for a bit."

The moment she turns her back, she hears, "Wishing I'd retained that lease after all, Watson? Would've been a nice, tidy back door for you to escape through."

Joan stops in place, touching her forehead. So that's how he wants this to go. She should probably be thankful he's speaking at all, but she's just so tired. "You know what, Sherlock? Let's not talk about people who like to run away. That's not a conversation that'd go well for you."

The plan had been to text Leonora and ask her to take over Sherlock-watch for a few hours. Then Joan takes a few more stairs than she intended, finds herself in the kitchen, and she thinks about how many dots she would need to connect to leave the house. Decide where to go, get herself there, don't break down or otherwise cause a scene. She isn't too thrilled with the idea of putting on a mask to avoid freaking people out. Even calling for delivery feels like too much.

She salts a pot of water and puts it on to boil, with a box of dry pasta on the counter ready to be poured in at the right moment. Her stomach will behave better after she's eaten. And after that, she'll take a bath, she'll check in on him once, and she'll go to bed. It's a solid plan.

The next thing she knows, she's staring at a pot boiled to nothing. She dumps it in the sink and shoves the untouched box of pasta back in the cabinet, distantly annoyed with herself for letting this simple task slip away from her. She sits at the table and shoves both hands in her hair, realizing just then that she's still wearing her coat and her shoes.

Sherlock takes the seat opposite her.

Breathing audibly through his mouth, he pulls the sweatshirt over his head and sits there in his thin t-shirt. She takes a moment to be wistful about the t-shirts he used to wear, with pictures and silly slogans.

"I am... predetermined to be a profound disappointment, Watson," he says. His eyes are red-rimmed and shining. His hands are all over the place. "This is who I am. Believing otherwise is- is folly. My... ill-conceived attempts to- to ameliorate my own loneliness invite nothing but..." He trails off, his face scrunching up with frustration, and he rubs hard at his forehead. She hurts for him, for the mental acuity he's still straining to recover, and for the feeling that he can't reach out and touch something without destroying it. She understands. She does.

"I have never regretted knowing you," she offers. "Even when it probably should have been easy to."

He presses his lips together, ducking his head. "Well, I look forward to your informing the Mittals."

Joan throws herself out of the chair and stalks a circle around the kitchen floor, laughing to cover up the sudden urge to be sick. Andrew is Sherlock's fault now. He's the one who caught the attention of Elana March and did nothing to divert it. He handed Andrew poison with his own name on it. He lost his wind performing CPR that came to nothing and ended up breathless with tears streaming from his eyes, nearly unable to process someone he'd cared about being pronounced dead right in front of him. "I know you're not seeing things clearly right now because you just had a traumatic experience, not to mention your serotonin levels are in the basement, but that, just..." She tries so hard all the time. She kept it together for so long. "Fuck you, Sherlock. You have your own mistakes to fixate on. That one is _mine_. I became a detective because I wanted to. I made my choices and, yes, I got a good man killed." She falls silent, glancing at him before she sits down again.

"It's hardly the first time," she adds, too exhausted to be ashamed that her voice broke. She tips her chin at him. "You knew it might drag me under and you helped me through it. I don't know where I'd be now if you hadn't. And Kitty-"

He scoffs. "A means to an end," he mutters. He doesn't lift his head. "I was alone and she was there. And look what came of our... relationship. She..."

"You, _we_ , helped her find herself again and she took the steps she felt were necessary to get closure." Joan remembers what Marcus told her earlier today, a claim Sherlock made a few weeks ago about having a so-called magnetic personality. "Our actions have ripples, but we have no control over what other people do. You didn't throw solvent on Gruner's face. You didn't _cause Gregson's divorce_. There's no... I don't know, extrasensory force compelling others to your will. Where the hell would you even get such an idea?"

Abruptly she remembers talk of orbits, being pulled along by his gravity. Right. They'll have to unpack that another time. She isn't ready to try explaining that he's both more important and less significant than his mind is letting him believe.

"And what of Marcus? Alfredo?" he asks, a note of bleak confidence underlying the faint question. He thinks he has check mate. "What of- of Oscar?"

She looks him in the eye. "Yeah, what about Oscar."

He blanches, shrinking further into himself. She goes to the sink and fills two glasses with water. She approaches him slowly, placing one glass on the table at his elbow and watching him trembling. His hair is a mess. She reaches out, smoothing over some of the tufts. He closes his eyes, leaning in to her touch and letting a tear fall. After he turns away, she drifts back to her seat, wrapping both hands around her water glass.

"I don't know what tomorrow will bring," he confesses, pushing at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Me neither," she says helplessly. "No one does. That's part of being human."


End file.
